Nick Staite is a Senior Asset Recovery Specialist at the Basel Institute's International Centre for Asset Recovery (ICAR). He is currently based in Kenya, after a period working for ICAR in Malawi as part of TSOC, the UK FCDO-funded programme to strengthen the country’s anti-corruption and asset recovery regime. During those five years, he played a vital role in securing high-level convictions in the Cashgate complex of cases, as well as strengthening the prosecution capabilities of the Department of Public Prosecutions and Anti-Corruption Bureau, the two agencies where he was embedded. 

Nick read Jurisprudence at the University of Oxford and trained as a solicitor in London. After practising for a few years in medical negligence and personal injury law, he moved to a firm in rural Oxfordshire and dealt with all types of litigation, developing an inclination towards advocacy.

Thereafter he soon began a long career in public prosecution, joining the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) at its inception and leaving it 28 years later. After performing the role of Branch Crown Prosecutor (lawyer/manager) for 12 years, he qualified as solicitor-advocate (higher courts - criminal) and resumed as full-time lawyer leading a Special Casework Unit before taking a post in the Complex Casework Unit for the East of England.

Nick has a wealth of experience in advising the police before and after charge in large-scale investigations, then managing the prosecution of them in the Crown Court. He handled serious homicides, drug trafficking, frauds, money laundering, conspiracies and people smuggling. Many of his cases involved, at home and abroad, urgent restraint of assets, pre-charge and confiscation of assets after conviction.

As a CPS trainer, Nick delivered vocational and practical training to colleagues and police on homicide, fraud, high-tech crime, mutual legal assistance and the statutory provisions for the Disclosure of Unused Material. He also mentored aspiring Crown Court advocates and provided advice and guidance on covert policing techniques, the use in evidence of call data from communication service providers and the management of complex, multi-faceted, multi-jurisdiction cases.